Business Thoughts

In 2013 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO at that time, announced that Microsoft is going through a reorganization and a fundamental shift in Microsoft’s business; moving from a divisional structure to a functional like structure. It changed the organization from five business units to four engineering groups organized by function around operating systems, applications, cloud computing and devices, and by centralized groups for marketing, business development, strategy and research, finance, human resources, legal, and operations. What was the reason for that shift? Microsoft suffered from bureaucracy so it switched to the divisional structure back in 2005 to be able to more agile and innovative to respond to threads coming from Google and Yahoo at that time. It helped the tech giant to grow at the beginning then it reversed and put it in a lagging position in all other markets but the PCs. As we have studied in the 2 nd  module, divisional structure may lead to a hostile...

TO:  Mr. Warren Buffet FROM: Ibrahim AbdelMoteleb, Coursera student DATE: May 17, 2020 SUBJECT: Soft drink industry analysis Researches have shown that a firm’s industry predicts around 13 percent of its profitability. Understanding a firm’s industry helps us predict its profitability and how attractive it is, and may help us find a better business model. In addition, it helps to figure out our “pivotal force” which is the greatest threat out of the five forces. Management can intervene to reshape the pivotal force or mitigate it which has a direct impact on profitably.    Five forces framework industry analysis: The Five Forces framework identifies and analyzes five competitive forces that shape every industry and helps determine an industry's weaknesses and strengths. Five Forces analysis is frequently used to identify an industry's structure to determine corporate strategy. Depending on your analysis, you will be able to adjust your strategy to increase...

TO: Niels B. Christiansen, CEO of LEGO FROM: Ibrahim AbdelMoteleb, Coursera student DATE: May 26, 2020 SUBJECT: LEGO strategy analysis In this rapidly changing environment, having a deep understanding of a company’s strategy is crucial to be able to adapt and have a sustainable competitive advantage. LEGO’s analysis: It is critical to highlight LEGO’s dynamic capability. Dynamic capability are the capabilities that enable a company to renew its resources and activities to adapt and survive.  LEGO in the 1990s experienced uncontrollable diversification with several non-LEGO bricks related products, this caused a huge financial loss. In 2004, LEGO brought a new CEO, Jorgen Knudstorp, who brought a new strategy that is cost-driven combined with constrained innovation.  It led to great success and a turnaround for LEGO. Knudstorp’s strategy worked because LEGO spread itself thin on several fronts with several products. Thus, it had a very high unnecessary cost ...

TO:  Kevin Johnson, CEO of Starbucks FROM: Ibrahim AbdelMoteleb, Coursera student DATE: May 19, 2020 SUBJECT: internal analysis of Starbucks Researchers have showed that company effects, which is the performance resulting from unique attributes of the company, explains 80% of the explained differences in the firm’s performance. It became critical to understand the organization’s own activities, resources, and capabilities to be able to achieve higher profits and performance. Thus, creating a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage: Competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to outperform its competition. Firms obtain a competitive advantage by doing specific activities and combines them in a unique way along with its resources. Starbucks’ competitive advantage: The coffee industry in the 1970s and 1980s before Starbucks wasn’t this profitable. It was dominated by price wars and cutting costs resulting in cheap poor-quality coffee. Starbucks ...

TO:  Mr. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber FROM: Ibrahim AbdelMoteleb, Coursera student DATE: May 16, 2020 SUBJECT: Uber mission statement  Researches have shown that mission statements have a very strong impact on an organization’s success. The presence of a mission statement helps the organization to clearly communicate the reason of its existence and what it is doing to its stakeholders, it acts as a great tool to inspire employees and to make them believe that they are a part of something bigger which motivates them and helps them reach higher potentials, and it is supposed to subtly represent the organization’s core values which acts as a reference point for future disputes.   Mission statement My suggestion for the mission statement is “Uber’s mission is to become the world’s number one personal transport option by offering safe and timely rides at high availability”. I believe that this mission statement covers the four criteria for a good mission stat...

I would like to start by highlighting the fact that I am a 22-year-old senior. I am currently studying finance at university. I do not have any experience as a manager as in all my experiences I was merely an intern. However, I do have an experience with a major decision as I switched my faculty from the faculty of engineering to the faculty of financial and management sciences. Let me first introduce you to a concept in third world countries to understand why this was a major decision. In third world countries going to medical school, pharmaceutical or engineering is a major thing; they are treated as top schools in the country and society due to several cultural factors. With that cleared, let me explain the situation. I was just out of high school with a high grade so subsequently, I was somehow forced to try engineering even though I didn’t want it.  I wanted to study business even though I had had never studied business subjects or even had the slightest idea about them....

In the next blog posts, I will upload essays that I wrote during my "Strategic Leadership and Management" Coursera specialization offered by the University of Illinois. The essays were written in the form of business memos concerning the subjects of the course.